“Building a Sanctuary: Urban Industrial Land: Transformation in the City of Cleveland,” a studio project by School for Environment and Sustainability landscape architecture graduate Zhelin (Penny) Li (MS/MLA ’21), was selected in 2021 as one of 55 curated projects exhibited by the Landscape Architect Foundation’s “Green New Deal Superstudio.” The projects were curated from among the 670 submissions to serve as a representative sample of landscape architecture ideas and catalyze further conversation. Now the project has been further selected to be displayed in a physical exhibit at the Grounding the Green New Deal Summit at the National Building Museum on April 9, 2022. The project, which was developed under the guidance of SEAS faculty Lisa DuRussel and Mark Lindquist, alongside Alexa Bush, program officer at The Kresge Foundation, will be seen by over 300 designers, students, advocates, and policymakers in the built environment.
The Green New Deal Superstudio was an open call for designs that spatially manifest the principles and policy ideas of H.R. 109 with regional and local specificity.
A national climate plan like the Green New Deal will be understood by most people through the landscapes, buildings, infrastructures, and public works agenda that it inspires. The Superstudio was a concerted effort to give form and visual clarity to the unprecedented scale, scope, and pace of physical landscape transformation that it implies.
